About 24.5 miles into the journey to Montreal, Quebec the ABS, 4x4, TCS and SLIP lights all illuminated on the dash board.The truck was still going strong and I got out to check it out. We were towing almost to capacity. Everything looked fine and I just shrugged it off as a bad wheel speed sensor or something. We made it to Mahwah, NJ and the truck's gas pedal stopped responding to my inputs. After a couple hours of on-the-side-of-road Chuck Norris style diag we determined that we needed to explore other options. We soon found a rental truck , a Chevy Silverado. The mom-and-pop rental place was cool with us strapping our trailer to it for the rest of the ride. We left Silver Lining on the side of the parkway with a note. A little over an hour later the NJ state police called and said that they were towing the truck and it would have to remain in impound for the holiday weekend. We re-routed their plan to Damien's house so we could move it at our leisure. The cost of towing it to Edison, NJ was about the same as the storage fees anyhow. The women were great throughout all the drama and we were all happy we were on the road again.
Friday night we arrive in Montreal and enjoy seeing the familiar faces and a couple new ones. Alex Pfiffer is the replacement judge for the now retired Stephan Verdier. Alex doesn't speak a lick of French but absolutely knows how to maximize the fruits of his surroundings. This pretty much means that anything can happen when you hang out with this guy. We were excited that at least the replacement was a fellow seasoned veteran ( and legend? ..something about chubby and chunky) of the drift scene.
Saturday we wake and head over to the track early to claim our pit space for the weekend. It was 75 degrees and sunny outside and we were excited to start driving for the weekend. We decided to try out some K---a (Insert sponsor request here) Tires for the weekend so we aired them down and went out for a couple laps to warm them up. We ran 16 laps around the course until they needed to be replaced. We were completely floored that the tires were lasting this long and had an excellent amount of grip. By the first set we had our line and pressures set and we were pretty much ready for qualifying on Saturday.
Saturday was the main event and the stands filled up quickly. We mounted up a fresh set of tires in the morning and went for 2 practice laps to scuff them in and prepare for qualifying. We had a couple of identical runs in qualifying and secured the 4th place position. The competition got underway shortly there after.
The stands were packed and the first round we were paired up with Justin Forsyth. He seemed like he was still getting the car dialed in for the year and versus a proven setup, we moved on to the next round.
Next in the top 8 we were paired up with Tania Bourbonnais, Tania had been laying it down all weekend and had really been working on improving her skill set behind the wheel. Her runs were consistent but I was able to mimic her moves a little closer than she could with mine.
The top 4 battle was the most epic battle of the day. Brad Carlton was the number one qualifier and on fire all weekend. He had speed and a good line around the course. In the past I usually faced him in the top 16 but he has shown that he has been studying hard in the off season. I was determined to show that "with age and experience come domination." (-Circa 2010; Jim Waughen) I put my front tire inches from his front fender in the first turn. In the second clipping point his car started to over rotate and he ended up in a spin. On my lead lap I rode the wall hard to make sure that we didn't end up with a one more time.
For the first place position spot I faced Marc Landreville. Marc was extremely fast and very consistent all weekend. We pulled off the line and Marc had the opportunity to lead first. His line was a bit shallow on his lead run but I stuck as close as I could to this bullet coming down the pike. We switched spots and unfortunately my follow run was not quite enough to claim the top spot on the podium. I leave this event satisfied and very fortunate to be running Formula Drift in the consecutive weekend.
We end up with the 2nd place spot on the podium and we are very happy with this position. Next stop on the DMCC tour is Montmagny, QC which is one of my favorite tracks. I cant wait to chase that top spot there.
The story doesn't end there. On Monday we head out and in the middle of the Adirondacks the trailer decides that it's going to blow a tire. We were already heading into a logistical nightmare having a rental, 1 dead truck that needed to get back to PA along with a trailer. Damien stepped up and helped us out in a big way by delivering the other truck to the shop for repair. The one blown tire wouldn't have been so bad except a second tire decided to fail and that left us on the side of the road and waiting for tire service. A trip that should have taken an easy 8 hours turned into an 18 hour affair.
On a side note, we would like to welcome OverDosed Performance as a partner for 2010. Please check out their website at odv2.com
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With only 2 days back in the office this week was an extremely taxing one. Formula Drift, Wall NJ was here and practice started on Thursday. We managed to get to this event without any problems what-so-ever and everything seemed to be turning around. Friday we laid down a blistering qualifying run that put us in 18th place out of the 32 drivers. This is a personal best in the Formula Drift series. We rode the wall all weekend and pretty consistently as well.
Saturday came and we were paired up with Ken Gushi in his RWD Scion. Ken had the top qualifying speed. His runs were a little inconsistent overall but we were still going to tackle this with everything we had. Unfortunately his ninja like speed pulled too much of a gap and the race was won on proximity alone.
I leave Wall NJ to ponder what kind of damage I could do if we had more tire and more power in the car. I guess only time will tell. Maybe we will see some forged internals for the Z sooner rather than later.
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